impotent rage.

In the meantime, Mrs. Gaston hurried home with the food she had
obtained. She occupied the upper room of a narrow frame house near
the river, for which she paid a rent of three dollars a month. It
was small and comfortless, but the best her slender means could
provide. Two children were playing on the floor when she entered:
the one about four, and the other a boy who looked as if he might be
nearly ten years of age. On the bed lay Ella, the sick child to whom
the mother had alluded, both to the tailor and the shopkeeper. She
turned wishfully upon her mother her young bright eyes as she
entered, but did not move or utter a word. The children, who had
been amusing themselves upon the floor, sprang to their feet, and,
catching hold of the basket she had brought in with her, ascertained
in a moment its contents.

"Fish and taters! Fish and taters!" cried the youngest, a little
girl, clapping her hands, and dancing about the floor.

"Won't we have some dinner now?" said Henry, the oldest boy, looking
up into his mother's face with eager delight, as he laid his hands
upon her arm.

"Yes, my children, you shall have a good dinner, and that right
quickly," returned the mother in a voice half choked with emotion,
as she threw off her bonnet, and proceeded to cook the coarse
provisions she had obtained at the sacrifice of so much feeling. It
did not take long to boil the fish and potatoes, which were eaten
with a keen relish by two of the children, Emma and Harry. The gruel
prepared for Ella, from the flour obtained at Mrs. Grubb's, did not